


Children of Blumenthal

by soltryce (soaringswallow)



Series: Childhood Lost - The Blumenthal Drei [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, This Is Sad, cw stands for caleb widogast, this time from an outsider's perspective, trent ikithon comes with his own warning, yet another look into caleb's youth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 15:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17810177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaringswallow/pseuds/soltryce
Summary: Hilda is not a traitor.She is a good citizen of the Empire. She lives in Blumenthal and helps its women birth healthy children.She held each of them in her arms after they were born.She heard Bren's first scream. Saw Astrid's first smile. Held the hand of Eodwulf's mother because her husband was away at war.These are children of Blumenthal.Surely they haven't forgotten?





	Children of Blumenthal

**Author's Note:**

> i'm back on my bullshit
> 
> ft. late night scribbles and a scene that could have very well happened just like this

Hilda hates waiting.  
She’s always hated it.  
She’s the kind of woman who always has something to do.  
The bread is in the oven? Great, time to sweep the floors and maybe do some laundry by the river. It only intensified when she became a mother, of course.

With three children at home, she just isn’t used to calm and quiet anymore.  
She hates it.  
Her hands itch to do something, but every time she tries to move them, the leather cuffs dig into her skin.

The chair is uncomfortable, too. She is a real Zemnian woman, short and stocky with muscles from a whole life of manual labor.  
This chair was built for… for whom, anyway?

What do traitors to the Empire look like?  
Surely they couldn’t be like her, who only lost her temper once after this fall’s bad harvest, ranting to her friends about how the king isn’t taking care of his people properly, about how the Empire doesn’t care about their late colonies like the Zemni Fields.

Surely real traitors commit worse crimes than this.

Hilda shifts in the chair again and wonders if her husband remembered to take the chickens inside before nightfall. He always forgets in she always has to remind him.

She doesn’t know for sure how long she has been here, but she is thirsty, and she wonders when they’ll realize they’ve just made a mistake and let her go.

~~They don’t.~~

She’s asleep, her neck craned in an uncomfortable position, when the interrogators come in.

The sound of the heavy door falling shut wakes her, and she blinks into the torchlight, expecting to see a brutish thug with fists the size of her head. Maybe with a little Goliath blood in him.

What she sees instead is…

“Astrid?” It _is_ the girl, quiet and serious as she’s always been, her grey eyes betraying no emotion. Hilda hasn’t seen her in a while, and she’s grown, but it’s unmistakably her.  
“Irma’s little Astrid?” She smiles. “By the Dawnfather, am I glad to see you. You know these people, right? You can tell them that this was all a big misunderstanding?”

But Astrid doesn’t speak to her. Instead, she walks around the chair and reveals the two others in the room.

Bren, always bright and always kind... and Eodwulf, thoughtful and honest, never without a smile and a joke on his lips.  
They both look at Hilda with the same coldness in their eyes, as if she hadn’t watched them make their first steps in the streets of Blumenthal. As if she hadn’t pretended to be mad when they’d torn down her laundry while playing catch.

The uniforms they're clad in don't hide the bandages peaking out of the sleeves. They don't hide the bruises on the sides of Bren's neck either, or how Eodwulf is limping a little as he steps forward.

Hilda swallows.

“What’s-” Astrid’s hand collides with her cheek, and Hilda is cut off before she can get out more words. The inside of her cheek is bleeding. She can taste it.

“You will not speak unless spoken to,” Bren tells her in a business-like tone that is so different from the excitable boy that she knows.

Their parents will be heartbroken.

“Hilda Grünhain, you have been charged with knowingly spreading false accusations against the Empire and its blessed King Betrand Dwendal. You are suspected to be part of an underground rebellion that spreads propaganda to plant doubt and disquiet among the good citizens of the Empire. Do you deny these allegations?”

Hilda stares, stunned, at Bren. “… yes. Of course. This is ridiculous, Bren, you know me, I helped your mother through her pregnancy, I brought each of you out into this world…” She cuts herself off when Eodwulf cracks his knuckles.

He’s put on some muscle, the broadest of the three of them, but no matter how menacing he looks, Hilda can’t find it in herself to be scared.

These are children of Blumenthal. They would never hurt her.

These are _just children._

“We have accounts from three different witnesses that tell a different story.”

Hilda meets Bren’s eyes and they are empty in a way that she hates more than anything else in this moment.

“Alright, I said some bad things about the king. Things I shouldn’t have said. But everyone loses their temper sometimes! It wasn’t anything serious.” She turns her head to look at each of them, silently pleading that they believe her. “I’m a good citizen. You know that.”

“Sadly… we don’t know anything,” Bren says quietly, voice tinged with something like regret, and he nods to Eodwulf.

Tiny arcs of electricity, like miniature lightning, start dancing across Eodwulf’s hands. His face still shows no emotion as he steps towards Hilda.

Neither of them so much as flinch when Hilda starts to scream.


End file.
